Published by Random House, On sale July 22, 2025

Pre-order from:

Porter Square Books *all pre-orders from PSB will be signed, with the option for personalization

Harvard Book Store • Brookline Booksmith • Books & Books • Tombolo Books • Bookshop.org • Barnes and Noble • Books-a-Million • Penguin Random House • Amazon

Or your local indie bookstore!

Advance Praise

“In prose as luscious as the ribs at our beloved Flanigan’s, the story that unfolds between Mayra and Ingrid lovingly embodies the vibrant beauty of Hialeah and the Florida Everglades. Mayra is a haunting testament to the literal terror of being consumed by the very thing you’re trying to escape.”—Jennine Capó Crucet, author of Say Hello to My Little Friend

“Gorgeous and hypnotic, surreal and unsettling, Mayra is part coming-of-age story, part Twilight Zone episode, part thoughtful meditation on all of the ways that memory is itself a haunted house. I loved this book.”—Karen Thompson Walker, New York Times bestselling author of The Strange Case of Jane O.

“Nicky Gonzalez channels Shirley Jackson (something I do not say lightly) in this disquieting, mesmerizing twenty-first-century Southern Gothic. In Mayra, the hazy borders of friendship and identity are blurred, made uncanny and dangerous, and I was hooked from paragraph one.”—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

“I ate this greedily; I swallowed it whole. Beguiling and moody and strange, Mayra shimmers with supernatural eeriness and the mercuriality of memory. Nicky Gonzalez unspools all the disorienting, lonely-making work of getting unstuck and finding home and bliss—then, she terrifies you. This is a mesmerizing, hallucinatory adrenaline rush of a novel.”—Claire Luchette, author of Agatha of Little Neon

“Eerie, haunting, and gorgeously written, Mayra is a powerful story of memory, home, the place, and friendships that make us. I was entranced by its luscious dreamworld of secret doors, traps, wonders, and the uncanny. Gonzalez is a master of tension, tenuous lines, and complicated love. Mayra kept me at the edge of my seat while also deeply moving me. I devoured this book and loved it.” —Ananda Lima, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

Read more about the cover here!